How to make the most of Flipboard

Flipboard - http://flipboard.com - is an online publisher, allowing for instant curation via the Flipboard app (one of our favorites). It's easy to save articles for later reading and sharing. Public stats include the number of readers, followers and page flips. Readers are welcome to reflip favorite stories. Publishers have the option of inviting others to edit their magazines.

Ron Mader: "Curating content is a good way to collect info for later reading that can be shared with others. Flipboard is one of my favorite go-to apps because of it simplicity and flexibility. I enjoy it as a publisher and as a reader. It's a great way to run through tweets and photos and file favorites in magazines for later reading and for sharing with others. I prefer Flipboard to Apple News which does not have the breadth and depth of content, nor the ability to share as easily."

Some numbers: As of August 2014 about 7 million Flipboard users created more than 10 million magazines. Users have doubled from 50 million in March 2013 to more than 100 million in August 2014.

Slideshare

Have you created an account on Flipboard?Can you login on your laptop? On your phone? On your tablet?
Have you created a magazine?
Have you shared your magazine via Facebook or Twitter?
Have you invited friends as contributors to your magazine(s)?
Have you created a widget for your magazine?
Have you edited your magazine?
Have you subscribed to someone else's magazine?

What should I flip?
Articles: Save articles for reading later on Flipboard, or collect articles around a topic of interest.
Photos: Use the bookmarklet to add photos to your magazines quickly and easily. Flickr, Pinterest and Google are a great place to start!
Videos: To flip a video, navigate directly to YouTube.com, Vimeo.com, or any site with a YouTube or Vimeo video embedded.
Music: Flip songs from Soundcloud to create a soundtrack for your magazine, or simply save music you'd like to enjoy on Flipboard.

Tips

The Flipboard Editor allows you to manage your magazines from a convenient dashboard. Rearrange and delete items, set covers and share your magazines with friends — all from editor.flipboard.com best viewed from a laptop or desktop computer.

Twitter

Hashtag

Pet Peeves

Sharing on a mobile, I can share via Facebook, Twitter and Google+ or via a message. On my desktop/laptop I can only share via Facebook and Twitter.

I can only edit my Flipboard magazines on my desktop computer, not via the Flipboard app on my smartphone.

Are stats available?

No public forum for troubleshooting/discussion

Can the profile background image be controlled?

Why does Wikispaces prompt the warning 'This page does not permit its content to be added to Flipboard magazines.'

Misc

These apps are best used in tandem with a laptop/desktop computer and installed on a smartphone.

I'm using Flipboard mostly for personal curation purposes. If I see something I want to come back to, that I think might interest others, it's easy to flip. In terms of measuring responses, the most meaningful gauge at this time is seeing how many people are subscribing or reflipping. (Reminder: I didn't come up with this language!)

A while back I used the Paperli widget as a nice add-on, but it was difficult to edit and in no way demonstrated my interest as an editor/curator.

At the very least I have more control with Flipboard and it looks nice.

Can Flipboard be used to bring in traffic?

Close This page does not permit its content to be added to Flipboard magazines.

Q&A

My name is Ron Mader and I'm a communication catalyst. I created the Planeta.com website in 1994 and host the annual Responsible Travel Week - http://planeta.wikispaces.com/rtweek - every February, the week of San Valentine's Day.

My work specializes in environmental and cultural conservation and responsible travel/conscious travel and ecotourism in particular. It's great to visit other people and places, but what makes travel and tourism transformational is when the activities -- aka vacation and holidays - improve the livelihoods of locals as well as catering to the education and recreation of visitors.

I have a passion for the natural AND cultural worlds. I enjoy seeking out the connections, learning and sharing what I find, amplifying local voices that are knowledgeable.

I use Flipboard because it makes it easy to organize favorite tweets according to regional and topical interests. Otherwise tweets seem to disappear into the Internet ether. Curating posts on Flipboard lets me archive them for my own interest and to share them with others who have similar interests.https://flipboard.com/@ronmader

The purpose of my work is to seed meaningful connections among rural and urban communities, Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples and the natural and cultural worlds.

What makes my work different is a respect for grassroots and local actors. I pay attention to local artisans, market vendors and cooks. We often promote tourism as a checklist of places to visit and things to do, rather than highlighting people to visit. Getting to know the vendors in Oaxaca's markets gave me life long friends and a tremendous insight to Mexico. Using the social web and Flipboard in particular, makes it easy to assemble stories in a way that promotes a conscious way of living and interacting with others.

Someone I admire from a different discipline are my parents, both educators who worked in the Indiana public school system. They taught me how to care about other people and how to do good work.

My "media diet” includes listening to favorite podcasts, following links to longer reads and watching live web cams and camera traps.

A unique productivity tip of mine is to write down the passwords for every site that I register. I know this is simple and that it should be obvious. That said, it's so temping to think we will remember a password when that is not the case. This list is also reminder to return the sites and see how to make the most of our user registration.

One issue that needs more attention is the nuts and bolts of the rural tourism. Travelers frequently do not know what to see, what to do, nor who to meet outside the cities. This is certainly true in the USA where we're aware of the disconnect among cities and the towns in the hinterland. Rural festivals are plentiful but rarely with explanations of how to get there!

If I could offer one piece of advice to my younger self, it would be to seek out and visit more local markets AND chat with the oldest vendors. Multigenerational conversations are blessings for all, connecting youth with experience.

PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 8, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Flipboard is rolling out its fourth generation experience for mobile phones with its most sophisticated machine learning architecture, expanded editorial features and a modern magazine look and feel that packages stories around people's passions into Smart Magazines. Pulling from the thousands of topics as well as the sources a person follows on Flipboard, Smart Magazines are automatically filled with content relevant to a person's specific interests. Unlike having a single news feed that mashes everything together, the new Smart Magazine structure creates a separate feed for each passion.

"The new Flipboard is all about helping people discover great stories curated by people who share a passion, including editors, influencers and fellow enthusiasts," said Mike McCue, Flipboard's CEO. "Smart Magazines represent a major breakthrough in how content can be personalized, curated and organized by passion, enabling us to take a new and important step toward our vision of modernizing the magazine experience for a mobile, social world."

Prior to this release, different people reading the same topics on Flipboard, like technology or cooking, would get the same general content. Smart Magazines also allows people to deeply personalize Flipboard, making it more meaningful to their work, life or hobbies. For example, it is now possible to select technology with a focus on venture capital, drones or cloud computing. Cooking can be refined to focus on vegan or Indian cuisine. Every person can have Smart Magazines tailored to his or her interests.Smart Magazines are built on a completely reimagined information architecture. Flipboard's topic classifier has indexed millions of RSS feeds and billions of articles shared by the community of more than 100 million monthly active users to achieve diversity and depth in thousands of passions. Organizing articles by topic allows Smart Magazines to pull content from across the Flipboard ecosystem and surface stories according to a person's personalization preferences.Additionally, thought leaders on Twitter have been picked by Flipboard's editorial team so that their tweets and stories shared on Twitter are included, adding important perspectives to each Smart Magazine. Tweets are topically indexed to ensure they appear in relevant Smart Magazines. This unique blending of curated sources, indexed content from the Flipboard community, custom editorial packages and topically organized tweets has never been done before.Known for its magazine-influenced aesthetic, this release of Flipboard modernizes the layouts, streamlines the actions on the page and makes personalization just one swipe away, so it's easy to edit or add as a person's interests evolve. The core new features in Flipboard include:• The Home Carousel

For the iPhone and Android user there's a new "swipe through" Home carousel that can accommodate up to nine magazines for quick access to favorite Smart Magazines, user magazines or individual sources. After nine slots are filled, magazines will be saved under the Magazines tab on a user's Profile.• Passion Picker

Easier personalization has been one of the top requests from our community and so we designed a new Passion Picker as a single page where people can search or select a passion to add to their Flipboard. It is always available at the end of a user's Home carousel so people can add more to their Flipboard at any time.• Smart Magazines

A single place for stories on any passion, Smart Magazines pull together content from across Flipboard's ecosystem of topics, user curation, editorial features and Twitter experts to create a custom package of stories based on a person's area of interest.• Custom Smart Magazines

A Custom Smart Magazine lets Flipboard users bundle specific sources into one magazine. Sources that can be added include RSS feeds, Flipboard user magazines, Flipboard Topics, and social sources such as Twitter handles or hashtags, YouTube feeds and Google+. Over the years this has been one of the most requested features.• Social Actions: Heart and Add

The two main actions on each story are now the Heart (like) and + (add). By tapping the Heart, readers signal to the ecosystem that it's a story others may like. These stories also show up under "Likes" in a user's profile. By tapping the +, readers can add the story to their own user magazine. These stories also show up under "Added" in a user's profile. Additionally, social sharing and feed fine-tuning are accessible in the new "Dot Menu" on each story.• Redesigned Profile

Everything related to a person's account is now accessible in one place. In the -1 screen, users can find everything they follow, their likes, magazines they've created and their followers. Here they can also edit their profile using the gear icon.To learn more about the design, engineering and editorial packages that have gone into creating the new Flipboard, see all of today's news here, on the announcement blog. See the new video here.About Flipboard:

Flipboard gives people a single place to stay informed and get inspired to pursue their passions. With more than 100 million readers every month, Flipboard is used by people around the world to read leading publications, blogs and industry news as well as to collect stories, images, and videos into their own Flipboard Magazines to share ideas with others or simply express their perspective. Download Flipboard for free in any app store or visit www.flipboard.com.